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Ferguson Officer Who Shot Mike Brown to Get $250,000 in Donations

In this Feb. 11, 2014 image from video released by the City of Ferguson, Mo., officer Darren Wilson attends a city council meeting in Ferguson. Police identified Wilson, 28, as the police officer who shot Michael Brown on Aug. 9.

A campaign to support Darren Wilson, the officer who shot six bullets into unarmed Ferguson resident Mike Brown and killed him, has collected nearly a quarter-million dollars in just four days' worth of online donations — and that money will go to Wilson and his family, according to the creators of a controversial fundraising page on the website GoFundMe.

"These funds will be used to cover potential legal fees, relocation and living expenses of both Officer Darren Wilson and his immediate family," say the administrators of the "Support Darren Wilson" Facebook page, which started the GoFundMe campaign on Monday. It received 5,902 donations, the largest in the amount of $5,000.

The campaign has ended and will transfer its funds to a second GoFundMe campaign supporting Wilson, started by a two-year old nonprofit called Shield of Hope, which bills itself as a collaboration between police departments and faith-based organizations.

But the pro-Wilson campaign assured its supporters the money would still be going to Wilson directly. The separate Shield of Hope campaign has been rather less successful, with $17,000 raised in a day.

Racist comments reportedly attached to some of the first campaign's donations, such as "don't let the savages win," were later deleted by GoFund Me. Twitter user Jon Hendren allegedly managed to get screen grabs:

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